Chicken lays giant egg, nearly a half-pound, but it's not a record

A rice-eating chicken has laid a giant egg weighing nearly half a pound.

Unfortunately for Easter-egg-painting Americans, the chicken is in Guizhou, in southwestern China. The fowl's owner told the media that the hen began laying the eggs about a week ago.

When it struggled to lay its first gigantic egg, "she thought the hen was dying."

Now it has laid several such beastly eggs. When villagers cracked open one of the latest, they found two yolks inside — and another regular-sized egg. They cracked that one open and found ... no new surprises, thank goodness. The owner said the only thing that distinguished this hen from her others was its diet. It prefers rice.

This egg does not top the record for the largest chicken egg ever laid.

In 2010, when Matilda the chicken, of Ipswich, England, laid an egg 3 1/2 inches high and 8.3 inches around, a Guinness World Records spokesman told the U.K. news website Metro: "The largest hen egg was a five-yolked egg measuring [12.2 inches] around the long axis, [9 inches] around the short and weighing nearly [12 ounces]. It was laid by a Black Minorca at Mr. Stafford’s Damsteads Farm, Mellor, Lancs [England] in 1896."